Early Modern Whale

My story today concerns a brief and ignominious appearance in history, that made by John Sel...

I’ve been reading David Rothenberg’s Why Birds Sing (Allen Lane, 2005), and was charmed to learn o...

I have been reading, as Shakespeare probably did in 1605, the anonymous translation of th...

This blog entry I am writing for students on my ‘Witchcraft and Drama’ course, but also as part of my long term project to make some com...

There’s a special pleasure to be had from a truly bad poet, and I have therefore been enjoying looking at the verse of Alexander Craig (...

I am gearing up to take a party of students off to ‘Renaissance Faces’ http://www...

I’ve been looking at verse materials published in commemoration of Sir Philip Sidne...

Alas, I have digressed today from reading Petrarchist poetry to seventeenth century smut,...

A day off today to see the Tour of Britain riders tackle Reading Cycling Club's hill climb course at Streatley Ian Stannard is the solo ...

Michael Drayton finished off the 1605 version of his sonnet sequence Idea with a set of dedicatory sonnets, ‘Certaine other...

“It signifies Marriage, open Enemies, Lawsuits, Controversies, Contracts, Warres, Bargaines, Fugitives, ...